Nicholas Economos is an artist and educator living in sunny Cleveland, Ohio, USA. His art practice includes work in software art, reactive media art, sound, video, and animation. He is an Editor Emeritus for Rhizome.org at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC, previously editing content for the web site and the Rhizome Rare email list over numerous years. His awards include an Individual Artist Project Grant in Film, Media, and New Technology Production from the New York State Council on the Arts and an Individual Excellence Award in Media Arts from the Ohio Arts Council.

He has exhibited at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo, NY, Art in General in New York City, Fylkingen in Stockholm, Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, SESI Gallery in Sao Paulo City, Window Project Space in Auckland, New Zealand, Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, Chiangmai New Media Art Festival in Thailand, DigiFest DXNet in Toronto, and the Cyberarts Festival in Boston. He has been a frequent artist-in-residence at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York and is included in the DVD anthology, "ETC: 1969 - 2009" covering 40 years of video arts at ETC. He was previously a visiting professor with the Department of Expanded Media at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred, NY and now teaches in the T.I.M.E.-Digital Arts Department at The Cleveland Institute of Art.

Art Exhibit Submissions
Information visualization is traditionally viewed as a tool for data
exploration and hypothesis formation. Because of its roots in scientific
reasoning, visualization work has, until recently, been limited to a
role of analytical tool for sensemaking.

In recent years, however, both the mainstreaming of computer graphics
and the democratization of data sources on the Internet have had
important repercussions in the field of information visualization. With
the ability to create visual representations of data on home computers,
artists and designers have taken matters into their own hands and
expanded the conceptual horizon of infovis as artistic practice.

In its first edition, the InfoVis Art Exhibit examines the merging of
artistic intention and visualization technique. We are looking for
artwork that reveals data patterns in aesthetic, innovative ways. The
goal of the exhibit is to steer viewers towards greater introspection
about what information is worth visualizing and why.

Interactive pieces should run on a standard computer configuration
(Windows Operating System, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB hard drive, 1024 by 768
pixels monitor resolution) as such systems will be available at the
exhibit.

Details Below:
Title and Abstract of the talk
Short Bio of Xabier Barandiaran
About the INFRASTRUCTURE SERIES

Title and Abstract of the talk:
"Hackmeeting and Hacklabs: technopolitics and reality hacking in
south-european autonomous networks"

For the last 6 years a number of autonomous collectives called
HackLabs (hacker or hacktivist laboratories) have been created at
different squat social centers and other self-managed spaces around
europe. The network of hacklabs has now more than 40 nodes (most of
them located in Spain and Italy) dedicated to build-up community
based free-software and open access spaces for skill sharing and
collective intelligence, technopolitic experimentation and direct
action on several digital struggles (cybercontrol, digital rights,
intelectual property, etc.). HackLabs were born as a result of
Hackmeetings: underground self-organized hacktivist meetings where
grassroot activist and geek culture meet to discuss, exchange and
coordinate different knowledge, resources and initiatives around
technologies and politics. The talk will focus on a set of
trajectories within the hacklabs and hackmeeting networks: the
experience of Metabolik (one of the first hacklabs in europe), the
distributed and self-managed organization of spanish and european
hackmeetings and the recent direct action campaing against
intellectual property (CompartirEsBueno.Net). Emphasys will be made
on philosophical background, discussion on technopolitical tactics
and opportunities for coordination.

May 25th 2006 - from 18.00
The project is a commission by The Comissariat

*************

Question notions of the object, of authorship and distribution

To arrange and rearrange information is to personally or administratively
produce or document history

Either using real documents, close copies or absolute fakes,
information exist to create meaning and commentary inside or beyond
context. Truth and evidence may be questioned, but the information is
still there. We have entered a culture of choice,
emphasizing the importance of availability; how to choose, arrange and
use. Distribute. Being an expert means to be confident there is always
an easier way to do it, that there is always a more direct
confrontation with reality which might yield an interesting spin-off,
that there is always the possibility of an incalculable effect, which
might turn
everything upside down.

In addition to RISD Digital+Media students, this lecture will also be
of interest to: architects, philosophers, scientists, gardeners and
the hospitality industry.

ABOUT SPURSE
Spurse is an international collective composed of individuals with
experience in a wide variety of fields. spurse has no (fixed) content
or members -- rather it is a viral multiplicity that is continuously
reforming itself as it becomes new projects and new events. In this,
it is open to change, contradiction, multiplicity, tangents,
infection, and betrayal. Spurse is interested in considering the
public as that which must be continually constructed as a part of the
invention of public space. In this we are interested in emergent
forms of individuality -- swarms, crowds, the person, groups, and
ecosystems.